1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to controlling access to services in a communications system.
2. Description of the Related Art
A communication system can be seen as a facility that enables communication sessions between two or more entities such as user equipment and/or other nodes associated with the communication system. The communication may comprise, for example, communication of voice, data, multimedia and so on. Communication systems providing wireless communication for communications devices, including various user equipment, are known. An example of the wireless systems is the public land mobile network (PLMN). Another example is the wireless local area network (WLAN).
A PLMN is typically a cellular system wherein a base transceiver station (BTS) or similar access entity serves user equipment (UE) such as mobile stations (MS) via a wireless interface between these entities. The operation of the apparatus required for the communication can be controlled by one or several control entities. The various control entities may be interconnected. One or more gateway nodes may also be provided for connecting the cellular network to other networks, such as to another cellular system or to a public switched telephone network (PSTN) and/or other communication networks such as an IP (Internet Protocol) and/or other packet switched data networks.
A cellular network, as an example of a communication system, may thus provide a number of communications services for a user. Furthermore the cellular network may provide access to various services and applications provided by the cellular network or by entities or networks external to the cellular network. These various services and application are often called content services. In the following description the term service generally refers to content services.
For controlling access to services, a communications system typically maintains information about service subscriptions. Only users having a service subscription may be allowed to access some services. Typically the service subscription information is maintained in a database or in a directory, and there is a subscription server managing the service subscriptions and service provisioning. Service provisioning refers here to configuring various network elements so that the user is provided with the access to the service he has subscribed to. Information about user subscribing a new service may be input manually to the subscription server by a person handling subscription information. Alternatively, the subscription server may be equipped with an interface for receiving subscription information from a further server which a user may access, for example, by browsing the Internet.
Access to some services may be controlled simply by service provisioning. In this case, when the relevant network elements have been configured properly, the user can access the service and otherwise he cannot access the service. In some cases, however, a user's access to a service is not dependent on configuring network element. In this case there may be need to monitor the user's service usage on-line, for example, for controlling the service usage or for charging purposes.
FIG. 1 shows schematically an example of a communications system 100, a communication device 10 of a user and also a server 120 external to the communications system. In the example shown in FIG. 1, the user of the communications device 10 is accessing a service provided by the server 120. The communication system 100 has a Customer Care and Billing (CCB) system 110 and an information store 112 for service subscription information. FIG. 1 shows further a network element 114 for monitoring the user's service usage. The communications system operator may, for example, wish to charge the user differently for browsing the Internet or for accessing his emails from a mail server. The network element 114 may monitor, for example, the protocol headers of the data packets transmitted to the communication device 10 for determining the type of content of the data packets. For simply monitoring, the network element 114 may not need access to the subscription information. But if the network element 114 is controlling the users' access to services based on subscription information, the network element 114 needs to have access to the subscription information in the information store 112.
Typically a network operator of a communications system has a customer care and billing system with an information store for subscription information. If the network operator wishes to add to the communications system further network elements for controlling users' service usage, the customer care and billing system typically needs to be modified for providing access to the subscription information. Different network operators may have different customer care and billing systems, and the network elements for controlling service usage may be provided by different vendors. The customer care and billing system typically uses certain protocols, which may be even proprietary protocols of the network operator. Therefore at least protocol translation needs to be done for providing access to the customer care and billing system for the network element controlling service usage. Traditionally a lot of resources have been invested in making a specific customer care and billing system and network elements needing access to the customer care and billing information interoperable.
Alternatively, it is possible that a further information store is used for storing information relating to services provided by servers or network elements external to the communication system of the network operator. One reason for this is that a network operator may be reluctant to give access to the customer care and billing system for any network elements. A further reason may be that the customer care and billing system does not store information needed for controlling service usage. Additionally, a customer care and billing system may not be able to respond as often as is needed to on-line queries made by network elements controlling service usage.
There are thus a number of problems in providing a solution for controlling users' service usage. Typically it is expected that a solution involves a considerable amount of integration work.
One of the aims of the present invention is provide a feasible solution to the problem of controlling users' service usage.